Enhancing cooperation and investigating peer effects on human capital formation: A randomized-controlled field study with primary school children

我们的建议有两个主要目标。第一个目标是测试个人对合作的偏好是否具有可塑性，如果有，在多大程度上具有可塑性，并能以一种积极的方式系统地受到影响。特别是，我们假设长时间的实际合作经历通过影响合作偏好对合作行为产生持久影响。探索合作偏好和合作模式差异的来源，为经济学和相关领域的大量文献提供了一个新的视角，这些文献指出了合作对分配结果、对公共资源的有效利用以及对冲突解决的重要性。我们项目的第二个目标是调查社会环境对个人特征和偏好的影响。我们提出的问题是，一个人的社会环境的初始特征在多大程度上影响了这个人的特征随时间的发展，即变化。我们将收集的非常全面的纵向数据集使我们能够遵循一些进一步的附属目标，这些目标在提案中有更详细的描述。我们的实地研究将集中在儿童身上，因为之前的研究已经表明：(1)偏好和技能的可塑性水平似乎对幼儿更高，(2)这个年龄段的发展差异是生活结果的有力预测因素。为了实现其目标，同时确保因果推理和高外部效度，我们的研究建议在参与者的自然背景下使用随机对照干预，德国小学。

Our proposal has two main objectives. The first objective is to test whether and if so to what extent individual preferences for cooperation are malleable and can be systematically affected in a positive way. In particular, we hypothesize that the actual experience of cooperation for a substantial period of time has a lasting effect on cooperative behavior by affecting preferences for cooperation. Exploring the sources of differences in preferences for and patterns of cooperation provides a new perspective on the large literature ineconomics and related fields pointing to the importance of cooperation for allocative outcomes, for the efficient use of common pools, and for the resolution of conflicts. The second objective of our project is to investigate the effect of the social environment on individual characteristics and preferences more generally. We ask the question to what degree initial characteristics of an individual`s social environment causally affect the development, i.e. changes, of this individual`s characteristics over time. The very comprehensive longitudinal data set that we will be collecting allows us to follow a number of further subordinate objectives which are described in more detail in the proposal. The focus of our field study will be on children,as previous research has shown that (1) the level of malleability of preferences and skills seems to be higher for young children, and (2)differences in development at this age are strong predictors for life outcomes. To address its objectives while ensuring causal inference and high external validity, our research proposal uses a randomized controlled intervention in the natural context of the participants, German primary schools.